Friday, April 06, 2007

Bill O'Reilly vs Geraldo Rivera on ILLEGAL immigration



Watch the video.

O'Reilly and Rivera are going at it about the recent case in Virginia beach about an illegal immigrant named Alfredo Ramos whom was driving while drunk and slammed his vehicle into a car that had 2 teens Alison Kunhardt, 17, and Tessa Tranchant, 16. They were at a traffic light when Ramos slammed into them pinning the two in the car and killing them both.

Couple things I wanted to mention about this case.
BOTH O'Reilly and Rivera are right in what they are saying.
O'Reilly is right in that the immigration policy and local authorities policy on illegal immigrants is very broken. Letting this man continue to stay here after being arrested the first two times and not processing him properly and running proper background checks on him is horrible. He could have had warrants for his arrest for murder and would have been left on the street because they did not check things properly.

Rivera is right in that this case should NOT be made into only and illegal immigration debate or issue. Granted the man was here illegally and and was allowed to stay in the country even after being arrested for drunk driving before by local authorities. BUT drunk driving is NOT something that is only synonymous with illegal immigrants. Its a problem with all races, religions, ages, and immigration statuses.

However the Governor of Virginia is also at some fault here for having two bills in the General Assembly of Virginia that would have "expand the powers of state and local law enforcement officers to include immigration."

Not pass.

The Governors position was this:

Kevin Hall, a spokesman for the governor, said Wednesday that Virginia has not entered into an agreement with the federal government - as some other states have - because immigration is a federal responsibility and because the Virginia State Police are plenty busy already. Besides, the feds have demonstrated that they "don't care" all that much about enforcing the law in every case.


That sounds like cop out to me.
So you don't enforce the law because someone else isn't doing it?
Sounds a bit foolish to me.

Hell the Attorney General PLEADED with the governor to change the laws but he did not

The attorney general sent a letter to the governor in January, pleading with Kaine to do just that. In a news release, McDonnell said there is " a strong correlation between illegal immigrants and crime... the inability of law enforcement to enforce immigration laws threatens law-abiding citizens. "


O'Reilly's blame solely on the mayor and the judge of Virgina Beach are very unwarranted. He should have also pointed the finger at Governor Tim Kaine. Which SURPRISE - SURPRISE is a Democrat. NO shocker at all.

While the illegal immigration debate and issue is something that is hotly contended. Lets not blur the lines with blame on the issue or use single incidents like this to highlight immigration statuses of people.

Should Ramos have been deported absolutely.
But his drunk driving is NOT something that only illegal immigrants share.

2 comments:

YRG said...

O'Reilly got a bit overemotional on this if you ask me. This has NOTHING to do with illegal immigration but EVERYTHING to do with driving drunk. And these can NOT be the examples that Americans use as "reason enough" to put extreme measures in to stop illegal immigration because these examples are NOT enough and only portray a certain bias against illegals.

CP said...

You are correct YGR.